Strangers like me: Meet 19-year-old Cristina

It’s time for another weekly installment of “The Strangers Like Me.” Hostels are a funny thing, you know. For reasons unexplainable, you share a random room in a random hostel in a random city with a random person on this random night. You think to yourself, “What could I possibly have in common with this person?” But you both came from somewhere and you’re both going somewhere. They might be strangers. But then you realize they’re strangers … like me.

Meet Cristina from Bern, Switzerland

Where’d I meet her?Amsterdam, Netherlands

Why is she traveling?
“After high school, I just started with university, so I never took a gap year, and I never went traveling. I really thought I was missing something,” says Cristina, who is backpacking now for three weeks. “I decided to travel alone because I thought that I’m not so self-confident, and I thought that this would probably help me.”

Where else would she like to go?
Madagascar

What is on her bucket list?“It’s something really small. I just. One day — I don’t really, I don’t really think it’s something — .”

“Just say it.”

“I want to find a job or something that when I wake up or go to bed that I’ll look forward to waking up the next morning. That’s not really a thing you can put on a list. But I always see so many people complaining about, ‘Ugh, I have to get up tomorrow morning and go to work.’ I want to find something that makes me so happy to work on.”

What makes her happy?Playing piano, a pastime she shares with her dad.

What are her thoughts on her country, Switzerland, which is ranked third in the United Nation’s 2013 World Happiness Report?“I think (people there) are not as happy as they could be or should be. We have everything. We have a good educational system. We are a rich country. We’re not in war. I think people should be much happier than they actually are … In Africa for example, I think people enjoy little things more than in Europe, and that makes them happier. You can’t generalize it of course, but I think there are other countries that are happier than Switzerland.”